Truckstop on the way to a damn good time..

On my way to The Badger last night for a beer with friends before we all headed off to The Old Mill to see a band, I caught myself thinking how I would rather be staying in the pub, just nattering and putting the world to rights rather than shouting over what was possibly a disappointing wall of sound.

I say caught myself because one of the good ideas that I have been trying to drive into my brain is that just like not judging a book by its cover – not prejudging an evening when you haven’t researched the band and have not as yet developed any kind of precognition is unwise..

And to prove this conclusively I proceeded to have one of the best nights of my life – mainly because the band were just so, SO GOOD!  Be prepared people – there will be more over-excited yelling to come.

Truckstop Honeymoon are originally from Lawrence, Kansas and now happily resident in Wales, Katie and Mike West play a mixture of bluegrass, rockabilly and rock and roll and they play it very, very well. Songs written by themselves that are in turn, funny, poignant and all ports in between,  wryly intelligent and always so clever they make the whole performance seem easy.  It was hard to pick my favourite but up at the top would be Johnny and June, Your Mother is a Sociopath as well as Walk of Shame which bought back a few memories.  It was the first time ever that I didn’t want to leave my seat, even for an urgent call of nature (damn you excellent real ale) for fear of missing something.

I ENJOYED EVERY SINGLE SONG..

I admit that in the past I have suffered from beer ears, similar to beer goggles – summed up by the phrase “there are no ugly men at closing time”, beer ears is the phenomenon where drink has been taken and you find yourself publically grooving to music you wouldn’t normally allow to grace your home stereo system, not only that – you are so in love with this music that you find yourself splashing the cash and buying a cd which after one confused play the following day, finds itself lurking in the back cupboard for the rest of it’s natural.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the music or band per se but it’s just REALLY NOT YOUR CUP OF THRASH METAL

Anyway.. Money in hot hand I made my purchase and this morning slipped that sweet, sweet c.d. into the slot of my laptop – and GLORY BE TO THE GODDESS, IT WAS GOOD. It was the real deal and once again I LOVED EVERY SINGLE SONG..  Bless you guys, and welcome to Wales, it’s fantastic to have you here.

Hope we will see you again real soon

 

 

 

 

When the novelty wears off..

Following on from my previous post I can happily say that I am no longer smitten with snow.  I know, I know – that didn’t take long, but really, seriously, what a pain in the arse these weather conditions are.

The frozen Warren by the frozen River Wye

Walking the dogs has turned into a mission.  Just getting out the door through three-foot of snow and down the driveway has become perilous.  Mr T has slipped and fallen twice already.  He is ok but I am mortified that on both occasions when he told me about it, I laughed so hard and so long I thought I was going to have a heart attack – I just couldn’t help myself.  Fortunately my hilarity was infectious and he started laughing as well.  I am not helped by a hormonal trough which has me exhausted and tearful for no obvious reason.  Tiredness makes me laugh inappropriately – go figure..

I found several tiny, feathered corpses on our walk down the river this morning, the birds are having a hard time of it, despite everyone putting out extra food for them.  I felt very sorry for the pair of resident swans as the river has frozen over in some places.

Mr T only just made it home on Thursday evening the weather conditions were so bad, and thankfully his work was cancelled yesterday and today.  We have checked on our elderly neighbours and everyone is ok.  The only casualty has been a neighbour who we rarely see and who we had been told did not take well to visitors.  Yesterday morning, Pearl, our oldest neighbour, had sent her son over to check he was alright and when he didn’t respond to knocking, Pearl rang the police.  Shortly after a police officer,  a community support officer and a national parks officer arrived and eventually managed to talk the man into receiving some help.  It took them over an hour to get him to leave his house and go with them, and we were all very pleased that he was going to be looked after.  It’s difficult trying to care for people who don’t want help but those men took the time and we were so impressed with them – and particularly impressed with Pearl..

In the meantime I am distracting myself from how bad it is going to be when the snow starts melting and all the paths ice, by obsessing over Gee’s Bend quilts and binge watching Brooklyn 99.

Denim, corduroy, synthetic blend (britches legs with pockets)

108 x 77 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

This is the Contour Shawl by Joanne Scrace (available on Ravelry) that I am working on using Koigu Painter’s Palette yarn.  It is a simple pattern but my hormonally buggered brain is making the crocheting of it a slow process, I seem to be constantly frogging and restitching.  So I am giving it a rest.

I will stop now, I am impressed that I have got this far..  We are warm and dry and not lacking in anything except sunshine – and that will come.  We are grateful..

Go well all..

 

 

Novelty snow..

Where I grew up in the North Island of New Zealand, snow was a real novelty.  I remember as a small child being taken up the mountains to see the sparse snow that had fallen but it was many years before I saw snow actually falling and then I was smitten.  It’s easy to be smitten with snow when you have warm clothes and a warm house to snuggle in of course.

This week we have had snow for the last several days on and off.  In fact for the last two days my late afternoon compulsory walk with the dogs has been enlivened by the weather.  Both days we have left the house in bright sunshine with the odd flick of the white stuff and both days we have been hit by mad, blizzard conditions before we were half way down the road, turning myself and the dogs into ambulatory snow creatures. Today the weather is properly cold, it’s been snowing constantly all morning and on our walk this morning I noticed that there was coagulating ice floating down the river.

You would think then that there would be few people about for the usual Thursday market day but surprisingly there has been a steady stream of customers at the few market stalls that did brave the conditions and I bought the last three remaining, locally baked, gorgeous hot cross buns at the Londis.  I also stopped at both bakery stalls buying Portuguese custard tarts from Kate the Bread  (which, by the way, you take one bite of and have a moment of utter bliss as your brain realises just how truly delicious they are) and a massive Chelsea bun from Sue bravely womanning the stall at Gooch’s.  I am eating to stay warm of course, not because of my massive greed 😉

Something odd happens to people when it snows – they suddenly become a lot more friendly, not that Hay people are not normally a friendly lot but snow means that everyone talks to everyone, whether you know them or not.  I have found myself on several occasions standing in a snowstorm having conversations for long enough to cause drifts to gather around our legs.  Also nationally it brings out the utter unselfish goodness in people who look out for their neighbours, help people trapped in cars and aid those in need.

So, how am I spending this snow day?  Well I have chosen today to defrost the freezer because why wouldn’t you when you can just pop the frozen food outside the door to keep cold?

 

I have taken the opportunity to slow cook a shoulder of pork using the Pulled Pork recipe from the Guardian so I will have that in the oven on low for the rest of the day.  There will be some crochet done this afternoon and maybe some stitching and listening to the radio before I have to drag myself and our furry friends out for a walk.

Where I will be crocheting.. and dreaming of spring.

Mr T is driving a bus in the frozen wastes and I am hoping he is ok and furiously hoping that the weather will mean he can come home early and have a snow day tomorrow.

I am also furiously hoping that everyone stays warm and safe and that all the wild creatures find food and shelter over the next couple of days until sane spring weather returns.

Until then – let’s be careful out there..

STFU

So many thanks to you Katy for saying so well what I wanted to say – you are wonderful and fierce.

Katyboo1's Weblog

I rarely write blog posts about the news or politics any more. It’s not that I’ve stopped caring. I have found in recent months, with being ill, that I care too much, that I simply cannot get past the overwhelming tragedy of this fucked up world to write anything much that makes sense.

What I really feel, most of the time, is a huge, anguished howl inside me if I engage with the news for more than a few moments at a time. I feel like if I start writing/talking about it all, I just won’t be able to stop, there is so much that is wrong and ugly about the world my children are inheriting and it is painful, truly painful to think about it for too long.

Today though, I feel I must say something about this outpouring by women in light of the Weinstein and parliamentary news…

View original post 1,646 more words

So what can I say about today?

It’s been one of those..

Picture this.. even though I feel like hell I am being good, getting extra exercise by walking the dogs to the Co-op. Grabbing my bag of groceries and thankfully turning towards home.

I let the dogs off lead on the river path for a free run and just before we get to the turn up to the road – Toastie goes AWOL.  My cries to no avail, I perch on a bench to gather myself and wait out the surge of pointless anger I feel towards the dog and discover my nose is bleeding – and not just a little bit, and I have no cloth, no hanky, just my scarf which I very sadly use.

And then there was the farcical effort to attach Charlie to the lead, find Toastie and attach her as well, all the while trying to hold my scarf to my face whilst carrying a bag of groceries with Toastie lunging at invisible squirrels and Charlie shying from the swinging bag and wrapping himself around my legs.

Yes that sort of day..

I can laugh about it now.

Crunchy Leaves..

I have unearthed my favourite green, woolen cardigan and today for the first time in many months I have worn it and the poncho and beret I made last year.  There is something about these much loved garments that brings comfort – like old friends you haven’t seen for a while.  And I love that it is cold enough to meet them again.

It is autumn – just over a year since we travelled back from New Zealand, and I found myself appreciating all over again how stonkingly gorgeous the changing countryside is, even though everything is withering and dying – it does it so beautifully.

This is my favourite time of the year without a doubt and I suspect that is partly because the introvert part of me likes the excuse to hide out, cwcth up ( a welsh cuddle) and hibernate.  But also – I like the way the air feels when we are out walking, the crisp, clearness of it.  The colder weather makes me feel more alert, almost as if there is a hint of danger,  perhaps it is an ancient memory stirring – beware the cold and dark are coming.

I have to be firm with myself not to rustle up memories of childhood ghost stories when I walk the dogs in the graveyard in the gloaming, in order not to give myself the creeps..

I love the changing colours of the plants, the bright glossiness of the berries, the activity of the animals and insects as they rush to fatten themselves and to store food for the coming months.

Toastie has gone squirrel mad lately as the little, furry blighters spend as much time as possible hunting for food, often down on the ground.  To our scruffy terrier, squirrels are  fair game as well as very annoying, the way they sit up on their branches making harsh cawing noises at her and giving her the furry finger, so she rushes up and down the woodland river banks peering up in the trees with not a hope in hell of catching anything.

 

Yesterday’s brief post was an attempt to sort out the technology around Google photos, because I now use my phone and ipad as well as the camera to take photos and I can store them all together.  I hadn’t yet worked out how to upload from Google onto my blog so a bit of experimentation was needed.

WordPress kindly tells me it’s four months since I last wrote and my previous post was so depressing that I needed to get rid of it for something more cheerful.  Oh and Charlie has totally recovered from his broken leg – thank you for asking 🙂

Despite our disastrous attempt at a holiday back in March we have managed to get away from Hay a few times without any major incidents.  There is one thing about bad things happening – it makes other occasional misfortunes seem like nothing in comparison.

We had a week camping in Rhandirmwyn, Carmarthenshire, at an incredibly beautiful camping spot down by the Towi River and despite rain and the attempt by the local insect population to eat Mr T alive, we had a great time.  In fact because of the rain and the well bitten Mr T, we got to spend a night in a pub in Llandovery in the middle of the week just to have some respite, which was most enjoyable.  The next day we visited one of our favourite towns just up the road from Llandovery – Llandeilo, which has lovely shops and eating places.

By Llandovery Castle

 

Camping with Gin and Snacks

I bought along a sun lounger for myself

Talley Abbey

We made it all the way up to Lampeter and visited the ruins of Talley Abbey on the way.  The Abbey was built in the 12 century and the Canons that lived there wore white robes. The place is lovely and spooky and I could imagine a dark night and the robed figures haunting the place.

We also visited the medieval Cilycwm Church, just up the road from where we were camping – very worth going there if only for the 18th century paintings on the walls, which were redone in the 1980s.  I particularly loved how the powers that be thought so much of the paintings that they just bunged other monuments on top..

 

We have managed a few other trips away – a day trip to Rhossili Beach on the Gower which started out as a quick visit down to Swansea with Sunday lunch at The Ancient Briton on the way and turned out to be a proper day out, not getting home till 10pm that night.  We haven’t been to the Gower since we got back to the UK last year and Mr T being in a driving mood we got to Swansea and just kept going.  We made the long walk down to the beach watching the hang gliders and peregrine falcons hovering above us and spent a lovely hour or so on the beach before heading back up the steep walk (not for the faint hearted) for a pint and chips at the pub on the cliff – spectacular views and the sun came out to cheer us.

 .

I will post this now as it has taken a couple of days to get this together and will write again soon about our latest break away.

 

Testing 123

What I did on my holidays..

Don’t get me wrong, we have had holiday disasters before.  There was the three days in Bruges when we arrived in the freezing rain at dusk to find the B and B shut and locked.  There was the weekend in Amsterdam, where on our arrival we found the hotel had given our room away and had no more beds. And then there was the long weekend in Rome when I came down with a horrible flu/cold on the journey there.

But this latest adventure really takes the biscuit.

I had sooo been looking forward to this holiday – a whole week away in a cottage down on the Dorset coast. Instead of rushing around trying to see everything in a weekend, we would have time to sit back and smell the roses/daffodils (it’s spring here, no roses yet). Plenty of time to visit museums, gentle fossicking for fossils  on the beaches, drives in the countryside to see beautiful scenery.

We really should have stayed home and just dreamed about it, it would have saved a lot of grief..

It started on the trip down – with the brakes failing on the car, by the time we pulled into the services there was smoke pouring from the back tire and we had absolutely no idea why.  The brakes had been sorted recently and although the tire was burning hot, it was still in one piece.  Parked with the hood up we attracted the attention of various helpful, kind people and were about to limp our way to a garage in Chepstow when a man came up and informed us that he’d had experience of this sort of thing before and that we would find that after the car had a rest that it would be fine.  And guess what?  He was right.  We started on our journey again – the brakes worked and the smoke stopped and we made it to our destination with no further trouble.

Till we got there..

We were stood talking to the lovely lady who had showed us around our cottage, the dogs were in the car – all excited and leaping about, it was time to unpack and show them their accommodation for the week – except wait – we can’t, in their excitement the dogs had trodden on the door lock and locked themselves and the keys in the car… excellent.

We had to smash the window to get in and get them out..

But wait folks, there’s more..

We then preceded to have three lovely days, fossil hunting, admiring the scenery, strolling the streets of Lyme Regis and Bridport and drinking the odd pint of lovely local beer. And then it was Tuesday.

Mr T dropped me off in Bridport and he and the dogs went to the beach for a amble.  We had arranged to meet at a certain time and we would have a lovely lunch in town before maybe, another spot of fossiling.  So I was surprised to find him leaning out of the car and yelling for me, half and hour earlier than had been arranged.

 

Charlie, our beautiful Pomeranian boy was in Bridport vets in an oxygen tent, with a broken leg.  Instead of following Mr T and Toastie down to the beach he had wandered unnoticed up the cliff path and fallen about four metres, probably hitting himself on the rocks on the way down, and ramming sand into his eyes when he hit the ground.

His leg was so badly broken that the Bridport vets said they couldn’t do any thing for it and his x-rays were sent through to our vets in Hay-on-Wye who have a visiting orthopedic vet who said he would try to fix it.

So..

Home we went, Charlie splinted and bandaged and carefully held on my lap.  He had his operation on Friday and it is going to take around three months to recover.  He has drops for his eye that was badly scratched, antibiotics, painkillers and a crate which he is supposed to be confined to, none of which he is inclined to enjoy but the worst part is that he is not allowed any exercise apart from very brief forays (5 mins) outside to toilet.  Have you ever tried to keep a Pomeranian quiet and calm?  Let alone, poo on demand during his five minutes outside?  It is a trial believe me.

We had no pet insurance so having started the holiday with a small amount of savings, we are now so deeply in debt to the vets that we will still be paying for it in nine months time.

All the holidays that I mentioned in my first paragraph turned out well and made good stories,  but I’m afraid I am struggling to  see the light in this one.  If I can’t keep Charlie from knocking his leg about there is the chance that it will not heal properly and he will have to have it amputated.

I am grateful that Charlie is alive and that we had a few days at least of enjoyment but still..

No more holidays for a while.

 

 

Bain and Murran’s World Famous Emporium.

I could moan on about the state of the world, or get all droopy about the greyness of the sky – but I’m not going to.  It’s all got a bit much lately, so instead I’m going to write about something that cheers me up, another post about a friend’s fantastic shop in Hay..

I heard about Becky before I met her.  A woman came in to my work wearing a beautiful embroidered, felted wool bracelet, and I was like – Oooo! where did you get that?Information gained, I soon enough made it up to Hay Castle where Becky had her shop.

Since then Becky and her partner Tom have moved down to Castle Street and the shop there is an absolute wonder.  Like Simon in my previous post, Becky is enormously creative, knowledgable and has the magpie eye for finding interesting and unusual objects, clothes, shoes, jewellery and all manner of fascinating things.  I wander around her shop with my mouth open and you could easily spend an hour or two fossicking for treasure.

She is also one of the best friends you could have, kind, wise and a hoot, with a London background in magazine and T.V. work, she is an interesting person who is interested in other people – how lucky I am to have been able to come to the other side of the world to meet her.

Oh and Tom is lovely too!

Some photos folks…

Here is the woman herself under a waterfall of vintage scarves..

These are some of Becky’s own creations, beaded and embroidered brooches and bracelets, which you can’t buy on the net, so you’ll just have to come to town and visit..

 

Two floors of Amazing Emporium!

Something for the boys..

 

It was fun taking the photos but once again I don’t think I’ve done it justice.  So if you are in town and have had your fill of books, you can always take a wander into Tom and Becky’s shop and you might just find some lovely thing that you  can’t do without 🙂